Ok so I haven't played Holy since around level 20. I went through the entire Heroic process as Disc, all PVP I've done as Disc, and basically I like the playstyle. But when a Holy Pally came into the raiding picture, it became apparent that I was going to have to Raid heals. When that happened it also became apparent that I'd probably have to switch to Holy.

So now I have a question for Pro Holy Priests out there that know what they're doing - because I still don't know the finer points. The question is this:

When you enter Chakra Sanctuary (AoE) it changes your Chastise into a ground AoE with a 28 second cooldown. You can keep Chakra Serenity up longer than 30 seconds by using State of Mind. This means it's takes away nothing from the Priest to use Holy Word: Sanctuary twice during a Chakra - once immediately and once at the end of the Chakra. But after 30 seconds, Chakra's cooldown ends, meaning you can switch Chakra to Serenity (Heal), with which Holy Word: Serenity does NOT share a Cooldown with Sanctuary. This mean's that by weaving back and forth with Chakras, a Priest can miss out on only a 3-5 seconds of a Sanctuary with the added benefit of having Serenity spells going.

An added benefit from weaving is that you are not inclined to use Heal anyways - Greater Heal, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, etc all are relevant spells - the Priest only wants the Chakra: Serenity state in order to get a very cheap and powerful heal for the 30 seconds that the actual Chakra spell is in Cooldown. Once the CD is over, he will switch back to Sanctuary in order to do his Ground AoE.

Does anyone understand what I mean? I'm finding it hard to simply explain it. But basically, is this worth it to do? Chakra eats a GCD, but no mana. Theoretically the Priest is still getting heals off the entire time he is doing this.

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Sanctuary isn't really very good - well, it is if pretty much an entire raid happens to be around the same spot, but otherwise it's not worth it. Use the PoH chakra when you need the +15% to group heals, not for sanctuary.

When in heal chakra Serenity is worth casting at every CD. But if you're doing group healing, you surely need to be in the PoH chakra.

OP confused me like ****, but basically what Callu said. Minus the part about it being good if the entire raid is stacked up since its healing is maximized among six players anyway.

Right now the only time you use it is if you need the AoE throughput to heal through something (AKA a very heavy AoE phase is coming up and just spamming PoH and CoH isn't going to cut it) and you're absolutely sure you're going to get 100% benefit from it with no ticks being wasted. This is something that you'll generally only see in 25-mans, probably even just heroic 25-mans.

Maybe if Blizz halved its mana cost I'd consider using it for anything else than creating a flashy looking AoE effect.

Sorry for any confusion. To help clear up - I'm talking right now about 10 man Magmaw/Omni.

Now I understand the boost Chakra Sanct gives to AoE healing, but it also leaves something to be desired when it comes to mana conservation. Chakra Serenity seems specifically designed for that very purpose. So yes I would lose out on the 15% bonus to AoE healing, but I would be able to switch to a more mana efficient/controlled rotation for 30 seconds - still able to cast CoH/PoH when necessary, all while people have a HW: Sanct to stand in.

Guess I'll try it and see if it works but expect the worst haha.

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That post doesn't lift my confusedness, but I have a feeling you might be getting some facts on Chakra wrong.

1) Only one Chakra can be active at any time. 2) AoE Chakra gives you Sanctuary, the AoE ground-based heal. It also gives you 10% crit on your 'direct heals' (which is every thing that is single-target and not Renew or PW:S). 3) ST Chakra gives you Serenity, the single target mana-efficient version of the 'Heal' spell. It also gives all your AoE healing spells 15% more effectiveness. 4) Being in a Chakra provides only benefits, it has no downsides. It does not make any of your spells cost more mana or something like that.

If there's a lot of AoE damage going around, you generally want AoE Chakra. You could of course go ST Chakra, but you'd lose out on 15% AoE bonus. You'd gain Holy Word: Serenity, but the point is... what do you want to do with Holy Word: Serenity if there's 5-6 people taking damage? It's on a relatively long cooldown, so the best you can do is slightly heal one person with it. You can go ST Chakra and simply use CoH and PoH, but if that's your plan in the first place, then why not just go AoE Chakra?

Hehe Moz you confused me too at first because you mixed up the bonuses.

Ok so first point is this -> AoE heals for Priests aren't all THAT hot. PoH is the only one that is substantially more powerful than other healing options in part because of the Glyph. HW: Sanctuary is nice because it bends to the situation moreso than PoH (which only hits one "Group" which may have only 2 of the people you're needing to heal).

PW:Sactuary then becomes a relatively massive HoT AoE that requires no further attention from the priest. This is definitely part of the reason I'm going into Chakra Sanctuary, because as I said a full AoE heal is pointless in some situations and burns mana up. The most powerful heal after that is PoMending which I do not believe is strengthened by Sanctuary.

Weaving between Chakras gives virtually no loss in the amount of PW: Sanctuaries you can put up because of the 28 second CD (Chakra has a 30 second) nor does it effect the strength of those Sanctuaries. You can effectively lay down 2 Sanctuaries, then Chakra again and go in as Serenity for 30 seconds missing only 3-5 seconds of CD on PW:Sanctuary. Serenity's benefits are a more powerful Renew with refresh and a instant cast heal which is actually relatively suitable for Magmaw because the AoE is not spread out evenly, it just hits multiple targets. The beauty of Serenity is the Mana conservation which is in stark contrast of Sanctuary and which is most definitely needed for a boss fight like Magmaw.

So either, the priest stays in/keeps recasting Sanctuary, but has to sit idle for large chunks of the fight due to Mana conservation and waiting for Mending cooldown, or he can switch into a very mana efficient single target Chakra and continue to contribute.

So the question is - reclarified again - are the benefits from Serenity worth the trade off on the loss of a 15% bonus to AoE healing? I'm getting the feeling you guys are saying no. I'm just not so sure myself and am going to continue to try to master this style. Blanket renew and then Heal rotation can keep Renew up on 4-5 people while you wait for Chakra CD which is a decent amount of healing.

Edited, Jan 27th 2011 3:19pm by tzsjynx

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Without crunching the numbers, I would guess no. Casting Holy Word: Sanctuary is just a side benefit of being in Chakra: Sanctuary. During raid damage phases, even when the damage is scattered across the raid rather than spread evenly, the Holy Priest AoE heals that are boosted in Chakra: Sanctuary--Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, Divine Hymn, Prayer of Mending, and to a lesser degree Holy Nova and Holy Word: Sanctuary--are the right tools for the job. Having them do 15% more healing, and getting 2 seconds less cooldown on Circle of Healing, is hugely more valuable than getting in a Holy Word: Serenity or refreshing Renews--heck, even your Renews will be weaker in Chakra: Serenity.

Furthermore, I wouldn't spend a lot of time right now trying to master a spell weaving style that will change drastically in a couple of weeks when 4.06 comes out and changes State of Mind to decrease the cooldown on Chakra.

With all due respect, now I understand completely what you're talking about, but you're asking something that has very little to do with 'holy chastise weaving'. This is because you NEVER chaincast HW: Sanctuary if you're doing it right. So the question "Should I keep chain-casting HW:S and instead do X" is kind of pointless in the first place because X is 99% certain to be better than chain-casting HW:S.

What you are actually asking is "in a mana-intensive fight, should I, perhaps occasionally, forego AoE Chakra for ST Chakra and for AoE heals use stuff like Renew and constant HW:Serenities instead?".

The answer I'd give to that question is simple; try it out. The thing is, that as A) you're still pulling your weight and B) nobody's dying, the cheaper heal is ALWAYS the best choice. If you can keep up the entire group with Renew, HW:Serenity and Heal, my hat goes off to you. If not people dying, the problem when trying this really is that you might start sucking on the meters - sure, it's all good if you can heal Magmaw without using anything but Heal, but if you're on 10% healing done and the other healers are both on 40%, then it's not actually *you* 'healing everybody with just Heal'.

I understand about healing charts. As Disc I was getting top or second to top - often behind the Paladin who was Main Healing for a good 1k+ HPS than me. I used to top Healing Charts on my Holy Pally back in Wrath all the time too. I understand about pulling weight.

I also understand how pretty much all the very basic mechanics in the game work - and also that sometimes the nitty-gritty stuff can intervene with basic mechanics - as in here this being the very intricate side of Holy Priests.

The problem with 10-man Magmaw is that Spew hits maybe 6 players, and spit hits 1 or 2. This gives weird distributions that simply are not rectified with AoE Spams. Sometimes someone may take a Spit Spew Spit and go from 80% to 10% almost instantly. Eventually everyone gets hit and it is for this reason AoEs definitely have a place, but with AoE comes loss of control.

As I said I prefer Disc's no-nonsense upfront style. Just looking at the numbers, though, I highly doubt it can outperform Holy on this fight. I will try different strategies and see which one seems to make the most sense.

Thanks for your responses =)

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Warning - Attempting to patch together any coherent message from my posts may result in chronic headaches and/or intense vomiting.

To be fair, you shouldn't abandon the concept so easily - you do have a good point, and on 10-mans I wouldn't be surprised if controlled Renews and Serenities do a better job at healing than pure AoE spam. They're a lot cheaper and if you can keep them rolling, pretty darn effective. At the very least it'll be close - in that sense, your post does make a really interesting point. Sometimes you simply need the AoE to heal through stuff, but on Magmaw this might not be the case - I remember doing that and basically spending the entire fight >10% mana with everyone hanging around 70% hp.

Sorry, I'd failed to notice that heals diminish beyond 6 people in sanctuary.

For info, the prayer of healing chakra does +15% to Prayer of mending too.

I understand the idea at least too now, I'm not convinced its worthwhile, but perhaps worth a try. Am now wondering whether you get to roll +15% renews when switching from PoH chakra to heal chakra or whether renew ticks revert to 'normal' when you switch?

Back to the magmaw example, I use alot of renew here (+15% in the PoH chakra), but I'm not casting heal on dps so much, so still I wouldn't see much benefit from being in heal chakra.